Posted
by
Zonk
on Wednesday November 17, 2004 @03:19PM
from the plumbing-problems dept.

duckle writes "The Inquirer reports that "The World has come crashing down around Half-Life 2 players today, as Steam's authentication servers in Europe have died.", and deemzzzz_k writes "It looks like even Valve wasn't quite prepared for Half Life 2's popularity. HL2 requires registration to unlock the game and although the Valve/Steam homepage claims that it fixed registration issues the servers are still overloaded. Registration is "delayed" and temporarily unlocking the game takes 20-30 minutes over a 1.5MB DSL line." This seems to primarily be an issue for folks who bought the game from a store; I purchased the game via Steam and was playing at 12:15 am PST on launch day.

(Disclaimer: I am quite aware that steam is technically H2O (gaseous) and air is actually a mixture of gasses. Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous value of the preceding comment.)

I'm glad when companies inconvenience their paying customers like this. Because, afterall, I'm sure the mandatory registration will prevent piracy. I just searched and see an activation patch already on IRC.

This is exactly what game companies keep failing to understand. The harder you make a game to use because of "copy protection", the more attractive the cracked alternative is.
If I buy a game, just let me play the damn thing.

The solution, of course, is to stop buying the fucking games. Although, wisely spending money by picking and choosing responsible vendors has never been a concept slashbots got while they sat around bitching about this sort of thing. Every time some idiot company like Valve releases some half cocked POS activation scheme, write them a letter far more polite and professional than this post explaining exactly why you're not going to buy it.

If I wanted to pay people to hurt me I'd give the crackhead down on the corner fifty cents to kick me in the nuts. I don't need to pay $50 so I can sit around screwing with a stupid activation code for eight hours while I chomp aspirin to keep from dying of a heart attack as my blood pressure blows through the goddamn roof.

Heck, why are you so intent on hurting yourself? Punish Valve. Get a game off P2P, play it, have fun, but don't pay Valve a cent. Why this pretended uprightness? When you want to punish Nestle for their baby formula scams, you can't buy Nestle products or they would get your money, and stealing their products would harm the retailer. But with content products like games you can have your cake and eat it too. Pirate the game - this way the developer/publisher is harmed and you have your fun.

I like being called an idiot [slashdot.org], a fucking moron [slashdot.org] or, now, a clueless fuck on Slashdot. This is strangely inspiring and invigorating, because to me it shows that I made an interesting point, but people are programmed to responde to it in a predetermined way. With an error message, basically, sort of "Does not computer" or "I don't understand"...

Of course, noone made an effort to explain in a rational and logical fashion why I am wrong. Why would piracy not be more effective tool in achieving your goals. I thin

"I understand it took a while to validate the thing, but after spending hours downloading it on Monday, fifteen extra minutes to verify didn't matter much--I was up and playing at 3:15 EST..."

Yeah, but 15 hours later, when everyone was getting home from work or school and trying it out, things went to hell. I had the Steam-based version and had no problem unlocking and playing it at 4 am. But after work, the Steam authentication servers were too overloaded to let me login in, even though the game was al

I had no problem at all, and was playing when I was ready to play. The initial wander through the city was fun, IMO. It gives you a chance to get familiar with the excellent physics engine, pick up and throw dismembered baby dolls, put boots into boxes, throw softdrink cans at things, etc. That being said, I managed to get myself into the expected "OMG HERE THEY COME, RUN!" state that is necessary to continue the plot. It felt extremely natural and emerged from a bit

Grrr... No one on slashdot seems to realize that one of the primary points of steam is NOT to stop piracy. The idea of being able to verify all the files on someone's computer adresses the much larger issue of CHEATING. Cheating in multiplayer games has been a huge issue with Half-Life and I think more than anything else valve wanted to make sure all the game files are un-edited to prevent cheatng by hacking the game.

So if the larger issue is cheating, why not allow people to play single player without steam and only require steam for multiplayer?

Or is valved frightened that people are going to cheat at single player and finish the game??

Steam is at least as much about piracy as cheating. As a result Valve has clearly stated that they are willing to inconvenience a lot of their customers so that a few will buy instead of pirate. I'm glad my midterms preclude me from installing HL2 until next week.

Wasn't Steam being designed long before the source code theft? Seems like revisionism to say "Steam was a reaction to the source code theft" when there doesn't appear to be any causality there at all. If anything, Steam had to be revamped to adjust for the theft, not created because of the theft.

I figured this is more about money than it has to do with piracy.
Doesn't Valve make 3-4x what they would on sales over Steam rather than people buying the game in stores?
Valve knew HL2 what be very popular. I'm sure there thinking went something like "Why NOT make are own online distribution software, require everyone to have it and sell all are games that way?".

I may be way off base, but I'm guessing once the rest of the developers see all the money Valve is rolling in after this, they will quickly follow suit. If not licence Steam for themselves, or even sell games through Valves steam network (it's already on millions of computers now anyways).

Exactly, that's what I see it as, Valve trying to cut out the middle man, and damn it, I say good on them!

I was dubious about the whole Steam thing, but my brother had an ATI card with the free copy included. He doesn't have broadband, so I said I'd download it for him, and then we'd copy it over to his computer.

Now, if Valve had been intent on f*cking things up for the consumer they would have made this a damn painful experience. But it wasn't.

I'd love to know how your friends were playing the game several days before they unlocked it. Unless your friends were magazine reviewers, what you're claiming is impossible...

It wasn't available through ANY pirate channels before the release, and I was enjoying playing it before the pirates did.

I'm a paying steam customer, and I was thrilled with the way it was delievered and unlocked. I (and a WHOLE lot of other people) hammered the Steam servers at 12:00:01 AM when it was released, and it unlocked fl

maybe if someone didn't steal and release the source code two years ago, valve wouldn't have had to do this to their customers.

Nope. They had Steam already planned out as a distribution and copy protection measure, and had a working version well before the source wandered off. If it was done as you suggest, then the guys at Valve are clairvoyant because they knew it was going to happen, and stupid because they let it happen anyways.

I do blame Valve because they lied to the paying users. Early on when Steam was announced, a lot of people were concerned about privacy issues and things like this preventing paying users from playing. Valve put out press releases (some not too long ago) promising that all such concerns had been addressed and that the bugs were worked out of Steam. They assured us that there would be no problems once HL2 hit the shelves. After all this, I'm wondering whether the the promises behind the privacy concerns were really addressed either.

For the first time since Ultima 9, we've got a retail product where the only way to play it is to hunt down a crack because the copy protection is so screwed up.

NHL2005 wil NOT install due to cloneCD. EA's fix was to uninstall cloneCD.

Hell, it get's better with that. Some of that crap like Splinter Cell2 bitches about Nero and other legit burning programs also. Sometimes, just the back that you have a CD/DVD Writer that is also a CD-ROM pisses it off.

And their answer is always "uninstall". God forbid honest game purchasers actually have a CD/DVD Writer and software to write and backup files to.

At 7PM EST, I tried installing, setting up a steam account and unlocking the game with my CD Key. The whole process took about 3 hours.

The steam registration mostly returned back cause it couldn't even hit the master authentication server most of the night. Unlocking the game took between 45-60 minutes (on a fast cablemodem line).

Wasn't this expected though? Its like when a MMORPG releases and they can't handle the load. Do they just expect a few hundred people to get the (arguably) most anticipated game of the year on its opening day and the rest to just trickle in until Christmas??

It took me over three hours, as well. About an hour into the horrifying process, I was thinking that if I was a criminal, I would already be playing.
In order to play, you have to have Valve's spyware program running on your system. You have to go through 4 separate EULAs. You have to sign yourself up on two different services. An internet connection is mandatory as you play the game. You must give out numerous personal details, put in a long password, and keep the disk in your computer while playing.

First, there's no evidence (that I know of) supporting that steam is spyware, do you have any to support that claim?

Second, Two services? I beleive you only have to sign up for steam.

Third. It's listed on the box that a internet connection is a requirement to activate the game, you knew before hand that it was required, you could have not bought it if you disagreed with it.

Fourth. Numerous personal details? you mean the email address?

Fifth. Long password? Mine is 6 chars long, that's not long at all.

Sixth. The cd does not need to be in the drive to play. You don't even need the cd to install it. Just type in the cdkey into steam and it will download it and install it.

Seventh. Updates are not mandatory, right click on hl2 in steam, click on properitys, and change the automatic update to off.

Eighth. On my computer it takes about 30 seconds to start from steam. Are you sure it's not a computer issue that it's taking 50 min to start the game?

Ninth. Afaik, there are no cracked copys of hl2 on the web yet, so if you were a cruminal, you still wouldn't be playing.

Tenth. Offline mode is enabled for the game when it is completely downloaded from online or installed. Just start steam without a inet connection enabled and it will start in offline mode and you can play away.

I think your only valid complaint is that their servers are overloaded, which is a valid complaint, but don't make it worst then it is.

Third: Yeah. Many games say internet connection required. They mean for multiplayer. As I said in the last Half Life 2 article, nothing on the box stated: "These CDs will be useful for nothing more than frisbees unless Valves servers are up and operational."

Sixth: Nope, the CD is required. I just tried it yesterday.

Ninth: There will be, and they will be easier to use than the software everyone else paid for.

In order to play, you have to have Valve's spyware program running on your system.

You must have a different concept of "spyware" than I do. Can you explain how exactly Steam is spyware? They tell you what it reports to Valve. You choose to install it (you don't have to buy HL2). It is simple to uninstall it. Choice, valid information, and easy uninstallation are 3 things not found in real spyware.

I sure didn't expect it to take this long. The real issue is does forcing this HUGE extra effort onto their customers really worth it. I don't know about other people, but I personally have never spent 4 hours installing a game (started installing at 4pm, didn't start playing until 8pm). I'm not a hardcore gamer. Yet, I find it hard to believe that most Half-Life 2 buyers had "expected" a delay like this.

Did you, or did you not, purchase Half-Life the first day it was on sale? Mmkay, then. If you want less of an effort *wait a week*.

For the record, three (3) separate installs took place on opening day among various computers in the possession of myself an my roommates. No hitches, nothing took more than 40 minutes... reasonable, for a game that comes on five (5) CDs.

Bottom line? Valve's products just earned >$150 from people in my house, and we 're all very happy with our

No offense, dude... but I can wait another 2 hours to play a game I've waited many years to play. I am not really complaining that much... yeah, it was bullocks and I was anxiously awaiting to actually play the game, but it didn't ruin my experience or anything.

I'd like to see piracy get knocked down a notch. I want games to be cheaper to buy. If that means waiting 3 hours when I buy a game, so be it.

I'd like to see piracy get knocked down a notch. I want games to be cheaper to buy. If that means waiting 3 hours when I buy a game, so be it.

{{snickering}}

You do realize that the videogame prices have BARELY changed in 20 years, right? Long before the Interweb - hell, long before most people had and used modems regularly allowing for easier piracy - videogames (at least the good ones) cost at least US$40 a pop. Any game developer/publisher claiming videogame prices would go down if piracy decreased i

Yup. Until I want to play CounterStrike and the file-auth stuff in Steam starts banning cheaters. Then I'll be happy it's here.

I installed from DVD in about 35 minutes last night. Including a failed Steam auth, after which it said "oops, sorry, can't register now, I'll try back later" and let me play anyway. This really isn't a big deal.

Most of that unlocking time is the decryption and hard disk activity, not Steam network activity.

That is true, however it remains Valve's fault. The cd's basically just copy over the exact same files as in the preload that you could get from Steam... which means that when you stick the cd's in your drive you have to do two install processes, at least. First you have to disc swap install the cds (5) which takes awhile. Then you have to register for Steam. Then you have to wait while it decrypts everything, on top of unpacking the entire game just like a regular install does in a single step. The decryption and adding extra steps to the install process are quite a pain in the ass, let me tell you. It took me over an hour to get the game running, and I consider myself lucky because the only problems I had were closed ports, which I quickly fixed. Some of these other stories I've heard, especially with Steam registration, would absolutely enrage me if it had happened to me. We payed for this game, we expect it to at least PLAY!

Valve is trying to protect their product, yes, but they've also created massive headaches and delays for those trying to install it, pissing off many fans. If Valve had not made the anti-piracy measures so bad, they would be making more money. This is just ENCOURAGING piracy! Why buy the game and go through all of this shit when you can download a cracked version and play? Valve will feel this one in the morning. I know I would've gotten Half-Life 2 if they didn't include all this crap.

Why buy the game and go through all of this shit when you can download a cracked version and play?

Okay, lets see my choices:* Buy legally by clicking on "Play Half-Life 2" in Steam and entering credit card, then best case play it in 5 minutes (if you pre-loaded), worst case play that afternoon (after it's downloaded, and saying that the auth servers are saturated)

* Find an IRC channel, then hunt around for a download site, find a torrent somewhere, wait for hours while there are too many peers and only o

Wrong. It is their fault for going overboard. And it's completely up to them if they want to go this route. Just like any product, it is still up to the consumer masses to make their likes and dislikes of their experience with the product. And if that includes installation hoops...

The whole idea of Steam to begin with is just utter shit. I have a Powerbook so I don't play very much Half-Life, but it simply amazes me what hardcore gamers are willing to put up with from Valve. There are lots of perfectly good other games; why the HELL should Valve even be allowed to do this? If it's M game, I should be able to play it, even if I don't have an internet connection. I don't doubt people who pirate the game are going to figure out ways around the authentication mechanism, and in the mea

I know another Slashdot discussion of Steam will lead to more dissing of Steam, much of it justified, but think about it this way. Steam is a great example of how a product can be distributed and not need the dreaded middle-man. The dreaded middle-man is the distributor. Vivendi. Next time around, maybe the won't even have a mega-corp involved, maybe they'll release it directly to consumers.

This is what needs to happen in the Music industry. Cut out the middle-man, cut out the need for the RIAA, etc.

By the way, people preloading HL2 didn't have a problem playing it, only those who bought retail (Vivendi's domain) requiring activation.

"Sure - it shoves a rod up your ass, but it sure beats dealing with Vivendi."

In this instance I'm sick of people picking sides, as if they had to absolve either Vivendi or Valve of all wrongdoing. I'm sorry, but both companies are buttholes for playing this middle-man game that in the end only winds up screwing the consumer. Buy from Vivendi: Valve gets less cash and you have to unlock the CD. Buy from Valve: they screw the giant Vivendi but you have to download over a gig of data and the servers are inund

I ordered online through Steam last night and it took about 30 minutes to unlock. I had already pre-downloaded.

On a slightly unrelated note: what's with the mid-game/mid-level load times? Are they just slow for me, or does anyone else feel like they may as well be downloading the game textures from Steam as you play?

I'd love to see people stop whining about this.
I bought it, it arrived today and after install was unlocked and ready to go within 20 minutes (on dialip). I saw someone say on a forum the other day 'in the time it takes, go for a walk or something'. I mean honestly, is it really such a big deal? Do you really need to sue Valve?Even the audio bug people are getting - it happens. No game can be perfect out of the gate. Give it a couple of days, and see if they sort it or a fix is found, but it's fucking poin

I think this problem underscores the frailty of requiring a product to be unlocked over the Internet. While it's one way of ensuring digital rights management, Valve could certainly have put in a backup system (a la similar to Microsofts 1-800 registration number).

I'm in the UK. I got everything installed and running in about half an hour. I got the Steam account setup, but when it couldn't connect to the server, it told me it was busy but I could still play the game anyway. It connected and finished the process during the night after I'd already played the game for about 5 hours.
It's a brilliant game, and I think they've done really well with Steam considering the size of the load they have taken. I have no complaints.

OK, HL2 was in development for how long? And now some unfortunate folks in europe can't play their LEGALLY PURCHASED game because of poor planning and implementation of steam (I thought steam was a bad idea from the beginning, but that's not the point here).

In addition, I'm one of the hordes of beta testers for World of Warcraft, with less than two weeks until the game launches, there is lag in some areas that nearly makes the game unplayable

Don't jump to conclusions, the game is still in beta and they're testing things. Also there are 500,000 beta testers and (hopefully) less servers than for retail.
Ordinn, a guy from Blizzard posted this on their boards:

Hi all,
A number of inquiries have come in about the lag issues on some of the servers, so we want to take some time to provide more in-depth information for you. Some of you might be surprised to learn that the lag you're experiencing is an expected and necessary part of the open bet

Most of you are lucky you never had to recover a password off of the Steam network. A friend of mine purchased the game online, and since then he uninstalled CS to focus on his studies. Now he can't recover his password!

If he uses the 'lost password' procedure in Steam he gets an Operation Incomplete error, and so far he hasn't managed to get a single human person to assist him at Steampowered. I was never a big fan of activation, but this cinches it.

"It looks like even Valve wasn't quite prepared for Half Life 2's popularity."

I have a hard time believing Valve underestimated demand - they knew how many pre-orders they had from Steam, and they knew how many boxes shipped to all of the retailers. Retailers regularily share projections of what sales will be by week (especially since they have to know how much product to order). They had models to follow, and NPD and others track sales weekly, so they probably knew at a minimum they would do the same, if not better, than Doom3 in August.

The fact of the matter is, their system can't handle the load, plain and simple.

Actually yes I think they should. If they are going to take your money, they should be able to deliver the project.Now do they need to purchase umpteen bajillion servers to handle this short period of time? NO. They could lease and coordinate with a server provider so they could scale up at launch time and then scale down as the rush drops off.That being said, for all I know they do this already. Models and simulations are one thing but until the network really gets pushed to the edge - you can't precisely tell the real world effects. This is why MMORPGs do their open beta phases - to try to push load to what will be realistic at launch. It doesn't always work perfectly but smooth launches such as City of Heroes probably owe their success partially to the stress testing open beta.Unfortunately Valve didn't really have a way to do this without doing artificial testing that would have pre-saturated the steam network and inconvienced current users.

If they choose to make the retail, boxed, version require online activation it is their responsibility to ensure that their servers can take the load. If they can't that's their failing and their fault exclusively. No one forced them to do this, you can make plenty of money without a draconian copyprotection scheme. UT2004 was patched to not even do a CD check, and only checks the key in multiplayer mode (when you have to be on the net anyhow) and it sold plenty.

I have no sympathy for companies that think they need bitchy-ass copyprotection and then can't properly implement it. It is YOUR job to make the experience easy for your customers.

Not only that, the more your protection messes with their experience, the more incentive there is to illegally copy the game. An illegal copy will just work. No activation, no registration, just install and go. If the servers are all backlogged to hell, makes an illegal copy look much more tempting.

"It looks like even Valve wasn't quite prepared for Half Life 2's popularity."

Funny, they were more than prepared to take the money from customers before checking to see if they had enough servers to handle the load. When their distributor was filling orders, they could've come up with a rough estimate of what they expected to sell and made sure they had enough servers. Somebody just didn't do their homework.

I bought the game from a store yesterday. It only took 20 minutes to install off the 5 CDs, you would think they could make it on DVD. And whats with not giving us jewl cases for a $55 game? Cheap paper sleves are for Drivers, not AAA title games. [/rant].

Where was I? Before it would let me play it forced me to create a steam account, something I've boycotted since Counter Strike 1.3 and has a lot to do with why I stopped playing CS. Never-the-less I created an account and waited as it tried to unlock my game. It told me that it was unable to register me, but it would let me know as soon as it was able to. I guess at this point I was "in line to register". Then it actually allowed me to play! I tried it again after disabling my network connection and it told me that it could not verify my CD key and that I could only play while I was online. I'm kinda pissed about that and hope they get that fixed soon. If the cable goes out and I cant play HL2 I'm going to be very very bored, I might even have to go outside

From my first 20 minutes playing reaction I've got to say this game is so much more open-ended then Doom3, and though I'm a huge id fan I've got to hand it to valve, this looks like its going to be just as fun to play as HL1. I could spend an hour just throwing television sets out windows at the police on the ground.

The unlocking time has nothing to do with the Steam servers from what I can tell, and everything to do with your PC. The hard drive on my system and the CPU were both doing non stop 100% usage practically for the 25 minutes I had to wait. So, I wouldn't be so quick to blame it on Steam's "overloadedness" (probably not even a real word).

From the moment I heard that even single player would require online activation, I knew it would be a punch in the face of those who actually pay for the game. There are many reasons why this could lead to problems, such as proxies/firewalls, and what happens in many years when you want to take a trip down memory lane? Will the activation servers still be up then?

And now it is even clearer that this is nothing but an insult to those who actually buy games instead of pirating them. Who are inconvenienced by this? Certainly not pirates. They download a cracked version anyway. This is apparently supposed to prevent piracy, but it obviously fails miserably!

No, the real losers here, again, are customers who actually paid for the game. They are the ones who need to connect to the Internet to activate the game. They are the ones who have been stuck all day, unable to activate the game, even for single player!

I held off buying Half-Life 2 exactly because of this online activation nonsense, and I was right in doing so. I hope to play the game, but I am very hesitant to give my money to a company like Valve, a company which lies to and deceives its customers, and adds hurdles that do nothing but inconvenience them, while pirates are completely unaffected.

If I sound like a troll, it's because I am extremely disappointed, and I am angry at Valve for being so stupid as to think that they can prevent piracy by forcing their customers to jump through hoops. I am angry because this is the way the industry is headed, and I don't like it.

Now games have started trying to decide for you which software to have installed (Doom 3 vs. various CD image programs), and they want you to activate it online, even for single-player... This is how the PC gaming industry will ultimately kill itself. By basically punching its customers in the face, while pirates remain unaffected.

When did Valve lie? When it was supposed to be out at a certain date. When they said it was complete, but the leaked version showed that it wasn't (the releaser even taunted them for it). When they said that the E3 demo was the actual game. It wasn't. The "AI" was pre-recorded.

I was wary about Half Life 2's mandatory activation before this. My initial concern was what would happen if I want to load this game up again five years from now to play it again on a new PC? Will Valve be available to activate it?
Apparently I was being too optimistic. Now I have to worry about whether I'll be able to activate it on the day that I buy it.

The whole thing struck me as very silly. If I'm playing online, then I don't have a problem with providing them a CD-key to connect to their server. But if I'm offline, why the hell should I have to register with them? I recently moved and my DSL isn't active yet, so I can't play this game. That's just silly.

My (horribly biased) suggestion: Valve should admit they screwed up, and release a patch that activated the game usnig a regular old CD key. If this doesn't get straightened out soon, they may be hearing the phrase "class action" a lot.

I really, REALLY don't care about CS:Source or any of the weeny online games that have been made with Half-Life, but I remember playing and enjoying the STORY of the first version.

And I can break out my install CD, install it and play it whenever I'd like, no internet required. Same thing with the game I play most often, Master of Magic, which is so old I don't even think there are any remaining fan pages online.

I'd like to play Halflife 2, but as long as it's associated with all that online registration and updating bullshit there's no way I'm going to bother with it. Basically, I want to buy a game and own it, not buy a game and install it and let it download 2GB of crap I don't want or need... but only as long as Valve keeps the serial validation servers running.

Some people have alluded to this already, but this just goes to show that "Digital Rights Management" present more of a violation of digital rights than a management system.

When I pay for a game, I should have access to play the game from the moment I own it until the end of time. The ability to continue playing the game should not rest in the hands of the company from which I purchased it.

Take for example, the current EFF [eff.org] battle against Blizzard Entertainment [eff.org]. If Blizzard decides to discontinue battle.net in the future, should legitimate paying customers be the ones who suffer? After all, they paid for a game with the expectation that Internet gameplay was one of the many features available to increase replay value. Thus, if they want to take matters into their own hands and create custom servers to allow continued online play, that should be their right.

The same goes for Steam. After all, when Half-Life first was released, they used Won.net [won.net] to host their online gameplay. I cannot count the number of times that I was unable to play (despite having a legitimate CD-Key) because either the Master CD-Key server was down, unreachable, lagged, or just malfunctioning. Now they've moved to Steam and everyone who has the original Half-Life game finds their CD has been rendered obsolete!

For this reason, users should have the right to do more than simply "make a backup copy". They should have the right to crack, break, and generally f*** up copy protection. They should have the right to run private servers for online play. Bottom line -- they should have the right to decide whether or not they can continue normal use of a program which they purchased fair and square. After the money changes hands, the game belongs to me -- not the company. So get your grubby hands off, you greedy bastards.

I purchased HL2 through steam and had no such problems. I probably would not have purchased the game if it wasn't for the ability to buy it online over the internet. I loved not having to wait in line at a store or install it from discs.

I understand that people who purchased the game via the brick and mortar stores kinda got the raw end of the deal, but I was very satisfied with the way buying this game worked.

Install the game from 12x DVD-ROM drive (DVD edition of the game): 5 minutes.

Activate/Unlock/Enable the game I bought: 45 minutes. (I'm wtf'ing at this
point already.)

Start the game off a SCSI 3 RAID 0 Array of (4) Atlas 10K IIIs on a system
with 768MB of RAM: 2 minutes (More wtf'ing ensues.)

Have the game crash and hardlock a dual CPU computer: 45 seconds to fully
lock up & require a reboot.

Reboot: 2 minutes

Attempt to start the game and have steam tell me, "Sorry this game
is unavailable right now, please try again later.": (Extremely irate WTF'ing
ensues!) I bought the fucking game, I installed the fucking game, why can't
I PLAY THE FUCKING GAME!?!

Attempt to start the game again, (watching task manager): hl2.exe appears
after 5 seconds, then vanishes.

Attempt to start the game again, (watching task manager): hl2.exe appears
after 5 seconds, then vanishes.

55 minutes after I start installing the game, I get to play it.
To Valve: Steam is an atrocity, I just bought the collector's edition and
I'll probably crack the game anyway so I can run it without the atrocity that
is steam and without the disc. (The disc is required by
the way, at least to start the game if you installed from a DVD).

A few minutes Googling the newsgroups came up with an answer: Valve had stupidly failed to test the installer with the option to install CS turned off. Back to square one, and another twenty minutes of feeding CDs...

Busy lines to get Steam content? Not pleasant, but understandable. Shipping your installer in this state, after five years of development? Valve should apologize.

The game rocks, but nobody should have to jump through 90 minutes of hoops after paying $50.

Read this [cornell.edu], print it out, and take it with you when you try again to return the product. I'm reasonably sure there's something in it to the effect that stores are prohibited by law to refuse a refund for a non-functioning product, even if it's an open game.